YMMV / Chaos Legion

• Awesome Music:
  • Some of the stage music can get a player psyched up... assuming you hear it over the sound effects. The (regular) songs for the Prologue and Stages 2/3 fit the bill nicely.
  • Considering that this is the work of Hideyuki Fukasawa (the man known for composing the OSTs for both Street Fighter IV and Marvel vs. Capcom 3) that put him on the map, let's just be safe and say the entire soundtrack. Highlights include "Blood Remains" (Title Screen), "From Results Screen to Intermission -First Phase-" (Intermission Screen 1), "Choir of Curse" (Boss Theme 1), "A Way to Nowhere" (Stages 4 & 5), "Evil Shore" (Stage 6), "The Drones of Hell" (Boss Theme 2), "Ravine of Silence" (Stage 7), "I Can Hear the Shriek" (Stage 8), "Monks" (Stage 9), "Feel no Fear" (Stages 10 & 11), "Bloody Truth" (Delacroix 1st), "Battle Cry" (Stage 12), "Solemn Voice" (Stage 13), "Be Killed Again" (Delacroix 2nd), "Massive Strokes" (Final Boss 1), and "Now I See" (Final Boss 2).
  • Moving beyond Fukusawa's contributions, "FLY" by Liv is an uplifting song that fittingly plays over the ending sequence and credits. The English version isn't too shabby either.
  • The Drama Digest CD of the OST features as its second track a beautiful piano piece by fellow (at the time) Capcom composer Masato Koda. This is used as the ending music in place of "FLY" in the PC version of the game, which is also appropriate, as it's an arrangement of Siela's theme, the above "Now I See," and Siela is featured prominently in the final cutscene.
• Breather Level:
  • Stage 6: Lakeside. Compared to Stage 4 or 5, most of the enemies are organic and can be taken down with the Guilt and Malice/Flawed Legions, and the level is also shorter than those two. However, your first encounter with the Danu enemies at the end may be a wake-up call if you don't take advantage of your Legion's Assist attacks to wear them down.
  • Stage 9 (Forest) is the easiest stage in the game. After the hell that is Stage 8 (Kuzca, the Grand Cave), you play as Arcia. You would expect this to utterly suck and for it to go down as the game's most frustrating stage, right? Nope. The game is reasonable enough to account for Arcia's differing mechanics and the game gives you plentiful ammo and healing items. Your enemies also down easily. Even the stage boss Maponos is a far easier version of the Maponos fight from Stage 5.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • You can pretty much go through the whole game with just Malice and Blasphemy once you unlock them. Malice's attacks are useful for slicing metal enemies to ribbons and its multi-hitting properties make it good for taking down the Danu enemies, whereas Blasphemy's AoE attacks are both incredibly damaging and good for crowd control.
  • Flawed is another popular choice, as the Legion has a balanced but above-average spread of speed and power (only beaten out stats-wise by Thanatos in this regard) and grants Sieg the ability to Double Jump. It's not uncommon for players to pair this Legion with either Blasphemy or Thanatos in the later stages of their runs.
  • A slightly lesser-used alternative to the above is Hatred, which gives the player a +100 HP boost when equipped. Its attack power is useful for taking on stronger foes and its Assist skill is the only Counter-Attack in the game that doesn't require Sieg to burn health in the process.
  • Arrogance's fully charged laser beam can make quick work of enemy spawners and even bosses.
  • However, once you max out your stats, you won't even need them. Just your regular attacks will be enough to bring the pain to all your enemies. And if you bothered to regain Thanatos and upgrade it, you won't need any other Chaos Legion.
• Cult Classic: Despite the game's mixed critical reception, Nintendo Hard difficulty (if you live outside of Japan), and grind-heavy nature, as well as the often negative comparisons to Devil May Cry, fans agree that this is yet another one of Capcom's overlooked, underrated titles.
• Fandom Rivalry: With Astral Chain. Fans of that game generally look down on Chaos Legion as a mediocre hack-and-slash game, while some on the other side of the fence call out fans of Astral Chain for not having any qualms with it copying this game's Legion-based mechanics and/or point out the bad optics of boasting about their game's apparent superiority over a title that released nearly sixteen years earlier.
• Friendly Fandoms: Though downplayed due to the relative obscurity of this game, there are a handful of notable examples:
  • With Devil May Cry. This is partially because the game was marketed in North America to try to capitalize on DMC's popularity, but also because Chaos Legion, while considerably less campy and spectacle-based than its "sibling", has a similar gothic feel to its atmosphere as the original Devil May Cry while ultimately being its own thing.
  • Despite the above, with Astral Chain as well. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this boils down to Astral Chain being seen as a Spiritual Successor to Chaos Legion on account of both games having similar gameplay mechanics.
• Goddamn Bats:
  • The Archanus, airborne metal monsters that fly around arenas in swarms and are lethally dangerous unless you have Malice or Blasphemy equipped.
  • The Zuom Cloarth are groups of tiny spiders that appear in cavern missions. Though annoying in hordes, they are not as dangerous as they may seem since an entire group can be dispatched in a single hit.
• Demonic Spiders: Rogue Ogmas will ruin your day. Unlike regular Ogmas, these wretches can breath fire that can and will burn away most of your HP. First encountered in Stage 7, they will make you struggle to get past the first area.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • There are a myriad of similarities between Delacroix and Sephiroth, as explained on the main page. His English voice actor, Josh Gilman, would go on to play Angeal, one of Zack and Sephiroth's fellow SOLDIERs, in Crisis Core.
  • Astral Chain is another Hack and Slash involving Legion-based combat. This would become even more humorous with the release of Bayonetta 3, which is often held up as a Creator-Driven Successor to Astral Chain due to how Infernal Demons function and are controlled in-game. As such, the Spiritual Successor to Devil May Cry ended up proving Chaos Legion's Misaimed Marketing right in a roundabout fashion.
• Misaimed Marketing: Part of the game's checkered reputation comes from the North American version of the game trying to draw attention to the Devil May Cry fanbase with a quote by PSM Magazine on the back of the box and various critics comparing Chaos Legion to said series, only to find out it plays more akin to a Dynasty Warriors hack-and-slash with Stylish Action elements.
• Porting Disaster: The PC port was heavily criticized due to the broken DRM in the initial prints of the port used that rendered the game unplayable after installation (unless a crack was used), which caused Capcom to recall the game and issue a patch to fix the issues with said copy protection. Those that were able to play the game beyond the copy protection problems, however, ran into other issues with the port such as frequent crashes between loading screens due to the game not supporting hyperthreading, poor quality Depth of Field effects, limited graphics options, performance issues, and mismatched textures when playing the game on Windows 7 or later.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: Clearing a stage without the use of a Legion. This goes double for the Early Game Hell, as leveling up your Legions along with the stat boosts and Enchant abilities of later Legions makes it more feasible for Sieg to function as a One-Man Army by endgame.
• That One Boss: Stage 8's boss is one of the more frustrating ones to take down. In order to actually damage it, you need to attack both legs to make it fall down and then attack it. Its attacks are guaranteed to slice off large chunks of your HP and despite what you may think, you can't hide behind the walls to dodge its laser attacks. When you do get it on the floor, it'll spawn Zuom Cloarthes to slow you down. If you brought Hatred and Malice with you, they're effectively useless. The only saving grace is that there are healing items you can take. After all this is Stage 9, which is thankfully far more merciful.
• That One Level:
  • Stage 4: Ruins of Murdoa. On top of having no checkpoints until the boss battle, the vast amount of Archanus the player must deal with after the initial set of enemies and Jenon will make the task of killing four other Jenons a tedious hassle without Malice to mow them down. The boss battle is a gauntlet of six Zagans divided between three waves, with the third wave having players dealing with no less than three Zagans and a horde of respawning Ogmas that is guaranteed to frustrate players from taking cheap shots from being ambushed on all sides and outside their field of view that quickly turns this boss battle into a tedious mess.
  • Stage 11: The Forbidden City of Yzarc "Core". The relentless zombie knight enemies are just as unforgiving in this stage, the level features some nasty placements for the sniper enemies that are able to take potshots at you if you get in their line of sights, and the stage itself is longer than Stage 10. The Side-B version replaces the regular knights with their armored variants that can tank most of your attacks.

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